Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #318... 22 Panels with Stephen Fox

Transcript

With Great Power #318... 22 Panels with Stephen Fox · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Steven Fox, who has a book called Scar Tissue Bargains, launching soon on Kickstarter. I got to read a copy of it. It was pretty cool. Steve?
0:20
Tad Eggleston: Do you prefer Steve or Steven? I should have asked that off-air.
0:24
Stephen Fox: I'm okay with either one. My folks call me Steven. Most of my friends call me Steve.
0:30
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay, so you'll answer to either and not go.
0:34
Tad Eggleston: It's Steven, dammit!
0:37
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of martyr, complex that comes with Steven, but yeah.
0:42
Tad Eggleston: St. Stephen with a rose… sorry, it's my favorite Grateful Dead song, so since you said it.
0:52
Stephen Fox: Yeah, it happens.
0:53
Tad Eggleston: Give us the front count at your pitch for scar tissue.
0:58
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
0:59
Tad Eggleston: Interesting book.
1:01
Stephen Fox: Well, I think… thank you. Interesting is an interesting word, so…
1:05
Tad Eggleston: I'll say interesting good, if that makes you calmer. Interesting good.
1:10
Stephen Fox: Oh, no! Yeah, I'm… Yeah, I appreciate, constructive criticism, so I'm open. But yeah.
1:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, you need to work on spelling a little bit, but I think only 3 or 4 different places. I hope you did digital lettering, because you should.
1:23
Stephen Fox: I did it.
1:24
Tad Eggleston: Pass.
1:25
Stephen Fox: Okay. No, I appreciate that, actually. Yeah, the…
1:29
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, I'm a teacher, so I noticed, like.
1:31
Stephen Fox: No, you're totally fine. Yeah, well, I'm still… I have preview copies, and I'm… I actually have some friends proofing it, so it's good timing. Okay.
1:41
Stephen Fox: But but yeah, the… ultimately, it's,
1:45
Stephen Fox: I'm in… you know, I'm almost 50, and…
1:50
Stephen Fox: just kind of discovering while raising kids and going through this time in life, one of the things that I've sort of struggled with is, like, this idea of control, and how we try to…
2:03
Tad Eggleston: You didn't give up on control, like, 3 months, 3 minutes after the first child was born?
2:09
Stephen Fox: I know, right? Yeah, no, it took me until…
2:11
Tad Eggleston: You're a slow learner.
2:13
Stephen Fox: I am. Well, I've never been accused of being overly intelligent, so…
2:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I have grandkids now, I can say this.
2:21
Stephen Fox: No, man!
2:23
Stephen Fox: No, I appreciate it. But yeah, it's…
2:27
Tad Eggleston: Control's a hard enough concept before you have kids, but I'm sorry.
2:31
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, I'm.
2:33
Tad Eggleston: Once they start moving on your own, if you haven't given up the idea of control, you're in for a ride.
2:41
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, that's… that's me, stubborn and a little slow, so… But, but yeah, it's… it's inspired by, like, 80s black and white indie books. The Crow… The Crow, actually, the…
2:54
Stephen Fox: like, James O'Barr's biography about how he wrote that story and why, like, really kind of hit me, because it's… it was a lot of catharsis and therapy and processing. He had
3:05
Stephen Fox: a lot of really dark stuff happened while he was working… before he was working on that book. My book's not rooted in that kind of pain, but it's, it's just my way of… it's kind of a love letter to my kids, and… and, just, you know, what it's like to just realize
3:22
Stephen Fox: Sometimes you have to just…
3:24
Stephen Fox: Let go of the control piece, and suffer the consequences, I guess.
3:30
Stephen Fox: But,
3:32
Stephen Fox: But yeah, it's about a father who ends up bargaining with a demon for his child's life. Pretty straightforward, it's been done a few times, like spawn, the crow, that kind of thing, but his…
3:44
Stephen Fox: his body, as he serves this demon, every time it's damaged, it grows back, a little more demonic. So that's kind of the…
3:54
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
3:56
Tad Eggleston: See, see, like, and this is where I have to, like, admit that the crow on one level is, like, a blind spot in my reading. I haven't actually…
4:08
Tad Eggleston: ever read any of The Crow, but I know its second publisher, and I know one of the first people other than Obar to do art for it.
4:18
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
4:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I really should.
4:19
Stephen Fox: Awesome. Perfect.
4:21
Tad Eggleston: Eventually, because Kitchen Sink published the graphic novel.
4:26
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
4:27
Tad Eggleston: you know, they collected all the caliber stuff together, and they did the graphic novel, and then they did a mini-series afterwards.
4:36
Tad Eggleston: And then Jim Terry was one of the first.
4:40
Tad Eggleston: non-James O. Barr.
4:43
Tad Eggleston: people to draw for The Crow. I think he actually drew something that James wrote, but I'm… Really? I'm having to look that up. And that popped in my head, because Jim Terry made a movie recently that's filming at the Goodman, or showing at the Goodman in…
5:00
Tad Eggleston: 12 days.
5:01
Tad Eggleston: And I… I will be going again. I went to the first… first screening at the Davis theater, but now they're at, like.
5:10
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the Goodman's more known for theater theater than movies, but hey, they're the Goodman!
5:16
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man.
5:18
Tad Eggleston: On May 30th, so anybody who is anywhere near Chicago, or the description of Jim's movie, it's called Shank, and I promise we'll get back to your comic, but I love this movie so much, and people need to see it.
5:33
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
5:33
Tad Eggleston: The description is… if Monty Python made John Wick on no budget.
5:43
Stephen Fox: Well, I mean… Yeah, I mean, it's definitely… it sounds very worthy of award.
5:50
Tad Eggleston: And that's actually a pretty accurate… Y-you know, it's like…
5:55
Tad Eggleston: But I actually find it brilliant, in part because, like, when you have no budget, there are two ways you can handle things, and the way that people most often go is to treat it seriously anyway.
6:11
Tad Eggleston: And act like this is the way you wanted it to look, and that almost never works.
6:21
Tad Eggleston: Jim and company leaned into the no budget.
6:24
Tad Eggleston: You know, they made up for lack of visual effects with, like, over-the-top sound effects, you know? Yeah.
6:36
Stephen Fox: Well, they made up for…
6:38
Tad Eggleston: Or, like, lack of fight choreography by doing weird camera stuff to make it…
6:44
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
6:45
Tad Eggleston: Anyway…
6:46
Stephen Fox: Well, I tell you, like, some of my favorite stuff from Flying Circus is… is a little bit of that, like the… the giant foot of God, and, like, the illustrated pieces that are kind of put in, you know, in lieu. Yeah.
6:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, so, yeah.
7:00
Stephen Fox: That sounds clever.
7:01
Tad Eggleston: I mean… I, I, I, like…
7:06
Tad Eggleston: And, you know, it's got a… like, Jim's an accomplished comic artist, so, like, he's got an eye for a good shot.
7:15
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
7:16
Tad Eggleston: So he might not have, like, the effects budget, he might not have
7:22
Tad Eggleston: act… I mean, Tim Seeley is an actor in it that gives you… Oh, that's cool.
7:28
Tad Eggleston: Like, idea of the quality of the acting.
7:35
Stephen Fox: He's got a pretty good sense of humor, though, but yeah.
7:37
Tad Eggleston: Seeley was totally outshined by his wife and daughter, who also acted in the scene with him.
7:45
Stephen Fox: Well, that's what would happen, I think, with most guys if their husband owned… or their wife and kids were… mine would outshot me, for sure. Right.
7:55
Tad Eggleston: So…
7:56
Tad Eggleston: And actually, that goes back to this, because that's the sensibility that I'll give you, and, like, the hat tip I'll give you, because, like…
8:07
Tad Eggleston: Don't take this wrong, I can tell that you're a 50-year-old, or… 40-something.
8:13
Stephen Fox: Yeah. 49.
8:14
Tad Eggleston: His first comic.
8:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Or his first comic for real, who's probably drawn…
8:20
Tad Eggleston: Off and on, and… and has…
8:23
Tad Eggleston: Notebook comics here and there through the years, but, like…
8:28
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
8:29
Tad Eggleston: Because there are things that are really, you know…
8:34
Tad Eggleston: really high quality, and there… then there are things that are like, okay… I mean, like…
8:40
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna call out something, because…
8:42
Stephen Fox: Okay.
8:43
Tad Eggleston: I honestly don't know if it was intentional, because the more I looked at it, the more I'm sitting there going, I could see a way where this could work. But, you know.
8:52
Tad Eggleston: The, the, the, the page where it's about… The… the… the raindrops…
8:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. On the… the… the windshield.
9:01
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
9:01
Tad Eggleston: But they're streaming the wrong direction.
9:04
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that's because when… when I was a kid, and we were driving, I would watch
9:10
Stephen Fox: the front windshield, and it would blow the raindrops up, on the wind, as the wind kind of carried them. And it was also supposed to be, like… because that's the turn in the story, right? Where he's, like, accepting that he didn'.
9:21
Tad Eggleston: And see, that's, like, eventually, I'm like, you know what? I don't think this was an accident. But as I was reading it, it really got to me. I'm like.
9:31
Tad Eggleston: That's not how they should look.
9:34
Tad Eggleston: Did he accidentally invert the art before?
9:38
Stephen Fox: Yeah, no, I get it. Well, and truth be told, I drew it… I drew it exactly the way you're describing, with them rolling down, but I was.
9:46
Tad Eggleston: Because even going, like… It depends on the car, whether they go up.
9:54
Stephen Fox: Yep. But there's all the features.
9:55
Tad Eggleston: going. And you're right, when we were kids, it was more likely, because there was a different angle to the…
10:03
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man. Well, the old Chevy Novas, and an Oldsmobile Supreme. Right.
10:09
Stephen Fox: I can only attest to the on those books.
10:12
Tad Eggleston: That was my initial, I'm like, dude, they're… These are great raindrops, except…
10:18
Stephen Fox: They're upside down.
10:21
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah. No, I actually… I'll tell you this, though, yeah, even… even though I made that decision whether it looks off or not, I do appreciate… I do appreciate, like, that kind of feedback, because it's like…
10:36
Tad Eggleston: And, like.
10:36
Stephen Fox: No.
10:37
Tad Eggleston: I never want to get too…
10:40
Tad Eggleston: I try not to get too hypercritical when I'm talking to people. I hope that enough people have listened to other… because we've done a lot of Kickstarters with, you know, a lot of, you know, yes, I have the big guys, but I like to talk to everybody. Yeah.
10:57
Stephen Fox: Oh, I… yeah.
10:59
Tad Eggleston: And I will first say I am not an artist, I am not an editor, I can tell you the books to read.
11:10
Tad Eggleston: But…
11:11
Tad Eggleston: But I have read a lot of comics, which is why, you know, certain things will stand out to me. Like, your art itself…
11:21
Tad Eggleston: is very good.
11:23
Tad Eggleston: You're still working on your acting.
11:25
Tad Eggleston: You're still working on your pacing. You're still working on… Panel placement.
11:31
Tad Eggleston: I don't… I don't know if the pages that are… Completely text.
11:37
Tad Eggleston: work or not, but at the same time, sometimes, particularly with a young artist, it's like, I mean, we were talking about Terry Moore off-air, and some of the, like, some of the early strangers, like.
11:48
Tad Eggleston: particularly early Strangers in Paradise would wind up having a whole page of prose, or two pages of prose, and, like, in some ways, it's like, come on, and on the other side, it's like…
11:58
Tad Eggleston: This is actually kind of important to the story.
12:01
Stephen Fox: And I don't know.
12:03
Tad Eggleston: I don't know how to draw it, either.
12:05
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Well, and I tell you, too, like.
12:07
Stephen Fox: One of the… you're… you're totally right, about a lot of what you're… you're kind of talking about. I…
12:14
Stephen Fox: for a long time when I was young, like, I really wanted to… to take the typical path of working for the big guys, one day, you know, doing some independent work. I did some independent comics for very small publishers, but the further I got in, I just,
12:33
Stephen Fox: I don't know why, personality or whatever it was, it's really hard to be an artist and draw someone else's story. It's a discipline that I don't think most, most folks like me have. It's just a lot harder than it is.
12:47
Tad Eggleston: It's… it's… I mean…
12:50
Tad Eggleston: it's also… I mean, one of the things I've learned is… is it's… it's not just…
12:57
Tad Eggleston: Really hard to be an artist.
13:00
Tad Eggleston: Drawing other people's stories, but it's… It's a challenge to… be a writer.
13:08
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
13:09
Tad Eggleston: Writing for somebody else. Particularly if, as is generally the case, not quite always in comics.
13:18
Tad Eggleston: But as generally the case, you do have… You did make…
13:25
Tad Eggleston: comics on your… I mean, like…
13:27
Tad Eggleston: Brian Bendis used to draw his own comics. Not well. He'll be the first one to tell you.
13:35
Tad Eggleston: But, but, you know…
13:37
Stephen Fox: Yep.
13:38
Tad Eggleston: Binks and Goldfish actually got published, as did, I forget what the other one before that, even though I have a copy of the book that he doesn't like to talk about.
13:48
Stephen Fox: Well, even, like, Battle Pope, you know what I mean? And…
13:52
Tad Eggleston: Right.
13:52
Stephen Fox: Why am I blanking on… he's, like, the most famous writer in comics right now, I can't think… Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, and it's… where I ended up was, like, just accepting the fact that it's, like, okay.
14:08
Stephen Fox: I have a really hard time not
14:11
Stephen Fox: drawing and not writing. So, like, what are my goals? Is it… is it to… like, because this, to me, it just wasn't attainable, because, like, looking at the artists that were new, they were so far ahead of me.
14:23
Stephen Fox: In all of those, like, those hard skills that you were kind of outlining, like the storytelling and those things. But my favorite… my favorite, you know, books from my youth were not always… like… like The Crow. One of the things I like about it is he's a really fantastic illustrator, but it has some of those shortcomings that I have.
14:43
Stephen Fox: I'm not trying to, like, James O'Barr.
14:47
Stephen Fox: is, you know, I'm not comparing myself to him.
14:50
Stephen Fox: But I… I saw a kindred spirit in some of.
14:52
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I haven't actually read it, so I can't speak to it. Maybe you're better than he is. We'll give you that.
14:57
Stephen Fox: I'm not gonna say that, I'm not gonna say that, but I will say.
15:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this… he eventually had other people draw for him, so, I mean…
15:04
Stephen Fox: Well, he… his…
15:06
Tad Eggleston: Here, here, I'll give you something.
15:08
Stephen Fox: Okay.
15:09
Tad Eggleston: You're a way better artist than Tom King.
15:12
Stephen Fox: Oh, I'll take that! Yeah.
15:16
Tad Eggleston: Though, though…
15:18
Stephen Fox: I mean, it's still…
15:18
Tad Eggleston: He'll lay out a pretty good page for his really bad art.
15:22
Stephen Fox: Oh, really? Yeah, he is…
15:25
Tad Eggleston: The cover composition is generally pretty good, it's just the art.
15:31
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man. Well, he…
15:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I just like to… I'm friendly with Tom, he's been on a few times.
15:37
Stephen Fox: Awesome, man. Yeah, he…
15:39
Tad Eggleston: He drew one cover… er, he had one person ask him to draw a cover, and he drew…
15:45
Tad Eggleston: drew, like, the stick figure, Batman, etc, and as a result, like, it started becoming a thing, and he had to charge, like, start charging $50 per cover, just because otherwise everybody would… because he's…
16:01
Tad Eggleston: And I actually saw it happen once. He's like, but here's the thing.
16:06
Tad Eggleston: it takes me as long to draw that as it takes Mitch to draw… A good cover.
16:13
Stephen Fox: Yep.
16:15
Stephen Fox: That's really funny. Well, it's…
16:18
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I… so I've wondered… I've wondered if I should kind of let go of the drawing, but it's important to me, so…
16:25
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, you shouldn't. That wasn't at all the point.
16:31
Stephen Fox: Yes.
16:32
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, really, what it, what it… I guess where I was going as I was interrupting you, is I see this a lot. There are certain people who insist that the only pure comics are the ones that are written and drawn together.
16:49
Tad Eggleston: Or by the same person, rather.
16:53
Tad Eggleston: Yup. Yep.
16:56
Tad Eggleston: Here, I'm gonna show you a Tom… and to be fair, most of the time, he's drawing somebody else's cover from memory, so you can't actually give Tom…
17:06
Tad Eggleston: the credit for the composition, because it's really somebody else's composition. So here's one.
17:11
Stephen Fox: with his back.
17:12
Tad Eggleston: Batman covers.
17:13
Stephen Fox: Well, he's pretty wildly creative, anyway.
17:17
Tad Eggleston: Oh, he's a very good writer!
17:18
Stephen Fox: That's fantastic. I love it.
17:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's a reason why they put his covers out on April Fool's Day.
17:28
Stephen Fox: Well, I'll definitely… I'll definitely say that's… that's how I'll introduce myself.
17:34
Stephen Fox: Tad Egg Eggleston said I'm a better artist than Tom King.
17:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I bet you… I bet you Tom wouldn't, like…
17:44
Tad Eggleston: I bet you Tom wouldn't even ask to see your art before… I mean, just from what I know of Tom. I bet you he wouldn't even ask to see your art before being willing to say that you were a better artist.
17:56
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Well, he's a hell of a lot better writer than I am, so…
18:01
Tad Eggleston: That's his… you know, I've heard he was pretty good in the CIA, too. That's a whole.
18:07
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah.
18:07
Tad Eggleston: skill set.
18:09
Stephen Fox: Yeah, good grief. Yeah. But yeah, it's like… I don't know, man. Once you hit… I mean, that's the thing about midlife, right? You decide, am I gonna keep kind of chasing the dreams I had as a kid that were not informed by reality, or am I gonna accept where I am and try and enjoy it? And, like, for me, the work that I do now, because, like, I did a fantasy storybook.
18:33
Stephen Fox: That was kind of about… about things that were going on in my personal life, and then scar tissue is very… it's the same thing, it's therapy, you know what I mean? Right. And it's like…
18:43
Tad Eggleston: very much like Tom King, too.
18:46
Stephen Fox: Oh, really? Yeah, we'll see.
18:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know…
18:49
Tad Eggleston: I've read his books, but you can see him working out the PTSD on the page.
18:54
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, that's… it's… he's… it's not like… I mean, especially, I guess, Mr.
19:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, normally, this is where I'd plug our visionaries and inquiries, the work of Tom King from a therapeutic perspective.
19:08
Stephen Fox: Damn.
19:09
Tad Eggleston: book club, but… but…
19:12
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
19:13
Tad Eggleston: Edgar's been really busy with the new comic shop lately, so we haven't recorded one of those episodes yet in 2026. We're stalled out in Batman!
19:22
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man, well, actually, yeah, man, that would be… that would be worth checking out, actually. So…
19:32
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, like, like, I mean, again, I keep, like…
19:37
Tad Eggleston: You caught me in a mood where my autistic brain is making all of the connections, like, we're just.
19:43
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
19:43
Tad Eggleston: Jim Terry, Jim Terry's… Best book, the one…
19:47
Tad Eggleston: The one that he's most known for, is Come Home India, which is absolutely him working through
19:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. He's… relationship with the Indian side of his heritage, his relationship with his alcoholism, you know…
20:08
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
20:10
Stephen Fox: Are you familiar with, Greg Scheiner?
20:13
Stephen Fox: He's…
20:14
Tad Eggleston: Ring spells.
20:16
Stephen Fox: Yeah, he… his work is very honest. Yeah. Really, like, Like, rough, and
20:24
Stephen Fox: But it… but it, it, yeah, it… it's some of the most, yeah, it's great.
20:31
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, I'm just saying, like…
20:33
Stephen Fox: Korean, there's…
20:34
Tad Eggleston: There is a, a, a long, long history of, of… of…
20:45
Tad Eggleston: Cartoonists working out their… their issues on the page.
20:51
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
20:54
Stephen Fox: So you… that last book you mentioned, you said… what was it called? Working out…
21:00
Tad Eggleston: home, India.
21:02
Stephen Fox: Cool. I was gonna take a note of that.
21:04
Tad Eggleston: By, by, by, Jim Terry.
21:08
Stephen Fox: Cool.
21:13
Stephen Fox: Alright.
21:17
Tad Eggleston: Arrow, -oh.
21:19
Tad Eggleston: I'll dump the… I'll dump his website into the chat while we're talking. So, yeah, we got completely off… off base. I was… I was saying…
21:28
Tad Eggleston: Give me the front counter pitch for your book!
21:32
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
21:32
Tad Eggleston: We haven't actually said anything about what it's about, we've only talked.
21:37
Stephen Fox: I'm sorry, yeah, I.
21:40
Tad Eggleston: Totally my fault here.
21:42
Stephen Fox: Well, I kind of… I gotta…
21:44
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I hope you feel less nervous now that you can see how totally and utterly unprofessional I am.
21:50
Stephen Fox: Well, the, yeah, no, I feel less nervous, but it's, it's, yeah. The… okay, front counter pitch.
22:04
Stephen Fox: So a, a father's child is in a catastrophic accident, and he…
22:13
Stephen Fox: does what fathers do in those situations. Parents, like, praise and pleads to whatever invisible kind of force, and nothing responds. And then he…
22:24
Stephen Fox: he screams out a blasphemous prayer and is met by an ancient blood god. And it's not even a bargain. The god does not…
22:33
Stephen Fox: barter with him. Instead, he says, for your blasphemy, you're mine.
22:38
Stephen Fox: And maybe I'll keep your child safe.
22:41
Stephen Fox: But as…
22:42
Stephen Fox: Arthur Byrne, which I can tell you where the name comes from, but you probably… you probably know if you grew up when I grew up and you love comics. But, long and short.
22:53
Stephen Fox: He's sent as a sacrificer, to go
22:58
Stephen Fox: kill anyone that Bestat deems as evil. And, he does, and…
23:04
Stephen Fox: as he is wounded or harmed, his body grows back with demonic flesh. That's kind of the…
23:12
Stephen Fox: it makes him stronger, more powerful each time, but it also consumes his humanity, so… And, you know, of course, the demonic piece is about control, and wrestling with, like, how we try to escape the things that are implant in life.
23:29
Stephen Fox: So that's kind of both sides of the story, so…
23:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
23:34
Tad Eggleston: I will say, because I'm just, I'm just flipping through… Yeah. …your…
23:43
Tad Eggleston: Kickstarter page, and wishing I hadn't said anything about, like, the fact that you're working on your composition and whatnot, because I will give you really great credit for picking out the
23:57
Tad Eggleston: The cream of the crop.
24:00
Stephen Fox: Thank you.
24:00
Tad Eggleston: And I also want to make it clear that you don't have bad pages. I can just, again, I can tell that…
24:07
Stephen Fox: Yeah. I don't… yeah, I don't take that bad. Right. Because also.
24:12
Tad Eggleston: I was making… like, I want to sell your book, too, though, so for the listeners out there, hi Mom, hi Adam, hi Britt.
24:20
Tad Eggleston: Hi, John.
24:21
Tad Eggleston: John, this would actually be your kind of book. Well… .
24:28
Stephen Fox: Yeah. For me, you know…
24:30
Tad Eggleston: The roughness has… the roughness is clearly informed by somebody who knows comics, just hasn't…
24:40
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's kind of the 10,000 hour thing, you know? I can tell that you're more in the 2,000 or 3,000 hour range, and maybe not even that many hours of, like…
24:54
Tad Eggleston: Organized practice as much as… disorganized practice.
24:59
Stephen Fox: Well, and I…
25:01
Stephen Fox: you know, I spent a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to do, because I worked as a, you know, not per… not…
25:08
Stephen Fox: Exclusively, but, like, I contracted as a screenwriter for a while, and nothing turned out. I help people with pitches and that kind of thing. So, like, comics, I just recently accepted that that's what I really want to do, because it's been the most impactful medium.
25:22
Tad Eggleston: Better.
25:23
Stephen Fox: They are, and it's just, like… and, okay, so, like, I could have a credits page, but really, like, my inability to share, or to put other people, out… But see, see…
25:35
Tad Eggleston: I'm just pulling this up. Your ability to balance the blacks and whites…
25:41
Tad Eggleston: Thank you. On this page, and the… and the…
25:44
Tad Eggleston: The borderless panels on both this page and this page that you shared really worked incredibly well.
25:53
Tad Eggleston: Thank you. But, like, so, so…
25:56
Stephen Fox: Well, and it's…
25:58
Stephen Fox: I think I'm learning, and that's my number… like, there's two goals I have. One is to get these stories, out in a comic format that I'm proud of, and proud doesn't mean that it's, like, it's what I exactly.
26:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, you should be proud for getting it out there. I mean, that was actually kind of where I was going at the beginning, and I got…
26:15
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
26:15
Tad Eggleston: in my autistic way. Like, there's a lot to be said for…
26:20
Tad Eggleston: I wanna tell this story, I wanna share this story, even though it's not perfect, we're just… we're actually gonna put it out there, rather than…
26:31
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and for this… this particular story, I kind of… there were times I… I, took it in to clean up some of… like, there's some stray lines from the scanner and that kind of thing that made it in, and I'm… I thought about taking them out, and I was like, you know, I think it's okay if they're really minor. I actually want some of that tactile…
26:50
Stephen Fox: And, like, some of the line work is not… is not as crisp as it could be, like, especially in the… there are moments that are memories, and they have a very different black and white balance, like, the positive-negative space is totally inverted, more traditional.
27:04
Stephen Fox: And, you know, but one of the things I was trying to say is, like.
27:09
Stephen Fox: life with people you love is a struggle, you know what I mean? And, like…
27:14
Stephen Fox: Just like me, 50, almost 50, trying to learn how to draw comics.
27:19
Stephen Fox: that's a struggle, too, you know what I mean? And I'm okay with it not being perfect.
27:23
Stephen Fox: Because I really am excited to be learning. Like, I have a good friend, Joseph Christie, who is a fantastic, like, fine artist, and he could tear my work apart if he wanted to, but he's so excited to see me improving. Like, it is contagious for me. I'm like, yeah, man.
27:43
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'll toss out, like, the difference between fine art and storytelling art is massive, as well. Like, fine artists can teach you all sorts of things that you can put to storytelling, but there are lots of fine artists that can't…
27:56
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
27:57
Tad Eggleston: stories with their art. And there are lots of great storytelling artists that will never, ever be fine artists.
28:04
Stephen Fox: Yeah, no, absolutely. Unfortunately, Joe… Joe is fantastic at both, so he sucks, but…
28:11
Tad Eggleston: I love it.
28:12
Tad Eggleston: Shouldn't that be fortunately?
28:15
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah, exactly.
28:16
Tad Eggleston: Would that make him more of a mentor?
28:20
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if I'm gonna share this podcast with Joe, yes, exactly.
28:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, cause, cause, I mean, that's, that's, it's something that comes up regularly. The artist on a comic, if you, if you, if you're trying to, to…
28:34
Tad Eggleston: To put it in movie terms, the artist on a comic is the cinematographer, the… Yeah.
28:43
Tad Eggleston: The actor, the costume designer, the set designer, the lighting director, sometimes the director.
28:51
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
28:52
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Well, and it's… I tell you to…
28:55
Tad Eggleston: Really, everything except the screenwriter, and sometimes.
28:58
Stephen Fox: Did you write?
28:59
Tad Eggleston: Director is, is, is, is the artist's job.
29:03
Stephen Fox: Damn.
29:04
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, some of the… some of the… best writers
29:11
Tad Eggleston: like, and again, in terms of collaborative, part of this is also feeling out what their artist wants. You know, some of the best writers will learn, oh, you would prefer not to have to do full-on costume design, so if I do the costume research and attach some pictures.
29:29
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yep.
29:30
Tad Eggleston: That's gonna make this better.
29:32
Stephen Fox: Yeah, absolutely.
29:35
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you want to pick out the cars, so don't even think about telling you what car should go in there.
29:40
Stephen Fox: You know. Yeah.
29:43
Tad Eggleston: Cause, I mean, going back to what you were talking about, like… I…
29:51
Tad Eggleston: I get the argument for the most pure comics being the one that are a singular vision.
29:57
Tad Eggleston: But I think that also, there are comics that are very clearly greater than the sum of their parts, or each.
30:04
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah.
30:05
Tad Eggleston: wound up adding… Yeah, that's a question I'll ask teams regularly, you know, as a writer.
30:13
Tad Eggleston: to tell me a scene that, like, you got it back from the artist, you went, fuck, I wrote that?
30:19
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
30:21
Tad Eggleston: Or, you know, as the artist, tell me a scene that you got from the writer, and you go.
30:28
Tad Eggleston: oh my god, this is amazing, I can't believe I get to bring this to life.
30:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I know.
30:32
Stephen Fox: No, absolutely.
30:35
Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, I mean, there are times where it's the letterer, you know, they get it back once it's fully lettered and go, oh my god, what?
30:44
Stephen Fox: Yeah, the old Walt Simonson? Yeah.
30:47
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, like…
30:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, first of all, I think we've had…
30:54
Tad Eggleston: 4, maybe 5 litters on now. And there's nobody who knows more com- more about comics than litters.
31:02
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
31:02
Tad Eggleston: Among other things, the first person to get to see the, like, finished version…
31:07
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah, one of my…
31:09
Tad Eggleston: Putting on the…
31:11
Stephen Fox: Well, there's a guy, Russ Wooten, who's on.
31:15
Tad Eggleston: Who I haven't had on yet, but I want.
31:17
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah, he's on Instagram. Yeah, he… he… again, he doesn't know who I am, but he's so kind. And he is…
31:27
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
31:27
Stephen Fox: Yeah, he's been all over so many, like, from working with, like, the new Youngblood stuff to, like, older… like, he's been all over, and done, like, worked for Wizard at one point, and
31:39
Stephen Fox: he's one of those behind-the-scenes guys that… that he'll come out with something, and you're like, I didn't know that. Yeah, and that doesn't happen a lot.
31:47
Tad Eggleston: No, no, like, we've had… Clayton Coles, A couple of times.
31:54
Tad Eggleston: who does all of Tom King's stuff, all of Batman, all of Star Trek, a lot of Star Wars.
32:00
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
32:00
Tad Eggleston: a lot of X-Men…
32:03
Stephen Fox: Yeah?
32:03
Tad Eggleston: lot of stuff, period, because most letterers do. We've had Hassan Atzmin El-How, who… Oh, wow.
32:11
Tad Eggleston: He had, he had a, a criticism of a magazine called, oh, what was it called?
32:21
Tad Eggleston: Can't remember right now what the Criticism magazine was called, though his YouTube channel is called Strip Panel Naked, and it's great.
32:29
Stephen Fox: They're like.
32:30
Tad Eggleston: Breaks down… It breaks down… how things work.
32:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know.
32:37
Tad Eggleston: Like, I love-hate the fact that he's been working so much that he hasn't been able to put new videos up.
32:44
Tad Eggleston: But he… he's, like, the…
32:49
Tad Eggleston: probably half of your favorite non… I mean, he does Marvel and DC too, but probably half or more of your favorite Marvel and DC book… or non-Marvel DC books, he did the letters on.
33:02
Stephen Fox: Oh, well.
33:02
Tad Eggleston: And anything that has anything, like, crazy off the wall, he was probably the one that did the letters.
33:10
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that's…
33:11
Tad Eggleston: Like, he's doing Absolute Martian Manhunter right now, among others.
33:15
Stephen Fox: Oh, awesome. Yeah, man.
33:17
Tad Eggleston: Clem Robbins has been on. Clem Robbins was the original letterer for almost…
33:24
Tad Eggleston: He did… well, he did all of 100… he did all of 100 Bullets, and he did at least 2 other series with,
33:32
Tad Eggleston: with, Azzarello and Rizzo, and he's been the letterer for the Hellboy universe for the last…
33:39
Stephen Fox: Wow. God knows.
33:40
Tad Eggleston: How long?
33:42
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I was looking over his YouTube, he's… Yeah.
33:47
Stephen Fox: He's done, he's done… yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to distract, but yeah, that's…
33:52
Tad Eggleston: This is what I do. Hey, I get to make you go down rabbit holes. Normally, I'm the one that falls down rabbit holes.
33:58
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, well, we have a, we have a mental pattern in common, so…
34:06
Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, no,
34:10
Tad Eggleston: So, like, you did all of this…
34:13
Stephen Fox: Huh.
34:14
Tad Eggleston: and you talked about how you're most comfortable as… an artist.
34:24
Tad Eggleston: And that shows.
34:26
Tad Eggleston: What was the most challenging overall?
34:32
Stephen Fox: I'm trying to… trying to figure out, like, what…
34:35
Stephen Fox: Personal parts of life were okay to abstract.
34:39
Stephen Fox: And which ones… which ones, could be just exactly like they were. Like, there are conversations between my… my child and I, my wife and I, that… that, like, brush against reality, but they're not reality. But they have the… they have those feelings, and… and…
34:57
Stephen Fox: you know, so for me, like, when you say hard, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Right.
35:03
Stephen Fox: You know, as far as, like, the technical piece.
35:06
Tad Eggleston: I was gonna say, how about from a more craft side?
35:09
Stephen Fox: Yeah, it's just, you know, it's accepting… you know, it's that same old thing, and I'm probably…
35:14
Stephen Fox: you know, it's just accepting that this is my story, that is important to me, that I want to tell as an artist and a writer, and accepting those limitations. That, you know, there are… there's somebody who could draw it better, there's someone who could write it better, but it's not…
35:33
Stephen Fox: you know what I mean? It… it would lose, it would lose what's important to me about it, you know? Right. And… and that's… that goes back to me talking about, like, okay.
35:43
Stephen Fox: You realize that your dreams when you were a kid were rooted, you know, maybe not in reality.
35:49
Tad Eggleston: I also remember…
35:50
Stephen Fox: You know?
35:51
Tad Eggleston: Reminds me of something that,
35:54
Tad Eggleston: Victor sent… I forget if Victor said it… When he was on…
35:59
Tad Eggleston: this show, I know he wrote it in one of his newsletters recently, where he talked about
36:05
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes it's hard to work with a writer who's written a really personal story, because, like…
36:16
Tad Eggleston: once he's involved, it's his story, too. So if they're too precious about things, it means that he can't…
36:25
Tad Eggleston: work. He can't do what he does.
36:29
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
36:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
36:31
Stephen Fox: Well.
36:31
Tad Eggleston: Which is, again, where you go back to… and that's probably one of the reasons why, with few exceptions, most auto-biocomics are just that, they're auto-biocomics. They're not somebody wrote a comic that somebody else drew.
36:45
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man. Yeah, and it's.
36:49
Tad Eggleston: No.
36:49
Stephen Fox: exact date.
36:50
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
36:52
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, a collaborative effort… You have to be… open to…
37:01
Tad Eggleston: You know, and again, it's a balancing act, because, like…
37:05
Tad Eggleston: There aren't a lot of people that want to work full-on…
37:08
Tad Eggleston: Stan Lee Marvel method, where it's just like, oh, give me a… give me a Silver Surfer story, Jack!
37:16
Stephen Fox: Yep. Well, and that's… it's funny, too, like, this is the first story that I've done, that I didn't write the script first, so I worked with myself
37:25
Stephen Fox: method, which is… which, that wasn't…
37:27
Tad Eggleston: I'm always fascinated by that, too. I mean, I know people who are fantastic artists, and, like, the writing's their least favorite part, and they still write themselves full scripts.
37:40
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah. They might do.
37:42
Tad Eggleston: Some mild thumbnail thing?
37:44
Tad Eggleston: As they're doing their script, to kind of work out, but, like, if they don't write themselves a full script, the drawing becomes too hard for them.
37:52
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and it… yeah, no, I can relate to that, too, because it's like, you… you start walking out on air, like, you're… you know what I mean? It's… I always have to have an outline, at least, even if it's… even if it's…
38:06
Stephen Fox: flexible, if I can go into it knowing, okay, because initially, you know, the ending was very different.
38:14
Stephen Fox: And… Yeah, that's just not how I felt like it needed to go.
38:19
Tad Eggleston: Initially, Doctor Strange showed up, he had the Eye of Agamemom, or whatever, and Spider-Man came and said, I'll save the day, and then the guys at Disney said, Steven.
38:33
Stephen Fox: Steve?
38:34
Tad Eggleston: even. See, here's the thing.
38:36
Stephen Fox: Oh, my God.
38:37
Tad Eggleston: Give you permission for that.
38:39
Tad Eggleston: Right. You can put it up on Kickstarter.
38:43
Tad Eggleston: switch to Mickey Mouse, because he's public domain now.
38:46
Stephen Fox: I did, yeah. Well, it would be, Cutter from ElfQuest, but yeah, exactly.
38:53
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's… that's… that's not… that's not public domain yet. You'd have to… to Wendy and about that.
39:01
Stephen Fox: Honestly, I might break the law so that I can meet them. Yeah, they're two of my heroes.
39:06
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, they've done… they've done shows recently, and I, like…
39:12
Tad Eggleston: They're on my list of people that I've talked to at shows and traded cards with, and failed to reach out since then, but they seem… they seem very amenable. You could probably send them an email, and they would love to… to… to… to choose.
39:25
Stephen Fox: Really?
39:26
Stephen Fox: I'm so shy, like, it's taken me so long…
39:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's… it's… that's one of the crazy things about comics.
39:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. And I know it's not just me, like…
39:37
Tad Eggleston: I… I am shy, too. In fact, I am… I am, one of my specific things that, like.
39:46
Tad Eggleston: I'm getting much better at because of this podcast, but, like, was something that was a real problem for a long time, that I… that I…
39:56
Tad Eggleston: I discovered after starting the podcast, this is a place to low-pressure practice it, is.
40:02
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
40:02
Tad Eggleston: Reaching out to people I don't know, like you did when you emailed me, And asking for things.
40:09
Tad Eggleston: So, so this thing that you just did with me. But…
40:15
Tad Eggleston: So, like, I set myself a goal. I'm gonna send, like, 5 emails a day, and I figured I'll get, like, 1 response a week, you know, but I'll get the practice, and I'll get used to not getting too… too worked up, and not hearing back. That's where everybody responds.
40:34
Tad Eggleston: Almost everybody says yes. I just slow down sending the emails, because… like.
40:41
Stephen Fox: You just didn't have time?
40:45
Tad Eggleston: No, I didn't have enough time to record all the episodes!
40:49
Stephen Fox: Yeah, no, I understand, yeah. Well, we're all keeping that safe side.
40:54
Tad Eggleston: And I've recorded, what, 800 episodes in less than 5 years?
40:59
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that's crazy, man. Good lord.
41:02
Stephen Fox: Good grace. That's… yeah, more than one a week.
41:07
Tad Eggleston: No, it's closer to 3 a week.
41:09
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
41:10
Tad Eggleston: We have a minimum of one a week, because we haven't missed a week on our weekly episodes.
41:17
Tad Eggleston: But we have 236 weekly episodes, and you're, like, with great power, number 318. Those are the interview episodes. There are 70-plus Lovin' Rockets book clubs. There… there are…
41:33
Tad Eggleston: 41 heavy metal book clubs.
41:38
Stephen Fox: Man. There are…
41:40
Tad Eggleston: 5 comics and baseball roundtables!
41:44
Stephen Fox: Man. Well, you're prolific, at least.
41:51
Tad Eggleston: I guess that's a word for it?
41:54
Tad Eggleston: I think my wife uses crazy sometimes.
41:58
Tad Eggleston: But it's not drinking, so, like, she's cool with it.
42:02
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
42:04
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Nope, my… now that my kids are 13 and 18, I'm in a similar boat, where there's a lot more grace for my weird habits, or hobbies, rather. Yeah.
42:15
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, I used to have a guy at a shop that I worked at. I love telling his story, because…
42:23
Tad Eggleston: He absolutely refused to ever take a receipt because he didn't want the evidence.
42:28
Tad Eggleston: He always paid in cash.
42:32
Stephen Fox: Nice.
42:33
Tad Eggleston: He discovered that not only did he always pay in cash, but he had this system where…
42:39
Tad Eggleston: every time he went to the ATM, he took out $200 for, like, lunch, that sort of thing. Only, really.
42:48
Tad Eggleston: like, he just had it timed out, where he went to the ATM, like, every 3 or 4 days, and whatever he had left over from the last time would just go in the glove compartment, so he had it for the trip to the comic shop on Wednesday.
43:04
Stephen Fox: That's really funny.
43:07
Tad Eggleston: Sitting there going… Mike.
43:11
Tad Eggleston: you know she knows how much money you spend on comics. They have the price right on them. It's like, well, I tell her I get a big discount, and I'm like, even if you get them at con… like, she's not dumb.
43:26
Stephen Fox: Bright.
43:27
Tad Eggleston: The biggest discount you would be getting is 50% off, and that's still a pretty big number, Mike.
43:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
43:36
Stephen Fox: Yep.
43:37
Tad Eggleston: But…
43:38
Stephen Fox: Oh, man.
43:38
Tad Eggleston: You have 5 kids, and they're all fed, and they're all clothed, and they're all in sports that you get them to regularly, and you do the chores around the house, and, like…
43:50
Tad Eggleston: So she doesn't care!
43:52
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that is… yeah.
43:55
Tad Eggleston: The first time… the first time you can't pay a bill because of the comics you bought, then they'll become a problem.
44:04
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah.
44:06
Tad Eggleston: Your Spider-Man habit is not something that bothers your wife.
44:11
Stephen Fox: Well, I find that things that keep us sane, our wives are in favor of, or at least mine.
44:19
Tad Eggleston: Well, particularly when they're, like, not unhealthy.
44:24
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
44:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are people who say that, like, I need that night at the bar with the boys to stay sane.
44:32
Tad Eggleston: I don't think wives are as forgiving of that.
44:36
Tad Eggleston: All the time. Particularly not if you come home… different.
44:40
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yep. Oh, man, yep.
44:46
Tad Eggleston: What, like, a comic book?
44:51
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man.
44:53
Tad Eggleston: Reading in the bathroom, you know, spending 10 minutes more in the bathroom because you had to finish the comic you were reading?
45:01
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
45:01
Tad Eggleston: Even less so if you have enough bathrooms in the house.
45:05
Stephen Fox: Right? Yeah, and you're not… yes.
45:08
Tad Eggleston: You know?
45:12
Stephen Fox: That always makes me think of…
45:14
Stephen Fox: books being marked. Sorry, that's a tangent, but from Seinfeld.
45:19
Tad Eggleston: We're all… have you noticed? Have we done anything but tangents tonight, Steve?
45:24
Stephen Fox: No. No, and it makes me… makes me feel comfortable, so…
45:29
Tad Eggleston: I haven't done anything. Okay, I'm gonna ask one of my actual questions now.
45:34
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
45:35
Tad Eggleston: one of the ones that I used to ask a ton, and I've gotten away from it, and I need to bring it back more, because I love it. Tell me your comics biography.
45:45
Tad Eggleston: Obviously not your bibliography, you don't have a lot of comics. Your comic's biography. Tell me about, like, what comics you remember reading earliest, what comics you remember, you know, a lot of people, like, remember that first comic that they bought for themselves.
46:03
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
46:05
Tad Eggleston: The, the…
46:05
Stephen Fox: So…
46:06
Tad Eggleston: What books were formative? What books were… were… I wanna do this.
46:12
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. So…
46:16
Stephen Fox: My brother, 7 years older than me, first books that I really read were the… the digest-size Legion of Superhero reprints.
46:24
Tad Eggleston: I don't switch things?
46:26
Stephen Fox: I've really…
46:27
Tad Eggleston: Buddy Johnny is the world's biggest League of Junior Superheroes fan.
46:31
Stephen Fox: Really? Yeah.
46:32
Tad Eggleston: He has me get pictures of people in their Legion of Superheroes rings.
46:37
Stephen Fox: That's awesome. Yeah, man, the first…
46:39
Tad Eggleston: He literally… he moderates, like, a,
46:43
Tad Eggleston: invite-only Facebook group that also includes, you know, has… has… is like… it's like four-part fans and one part creator.
46:53
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man.
46:54
Tad Eggleston: We've had 2 or 3 Legion of Superhero roundtables on 22 panels, you can go back and listen to those, too. I love it when I hear Legion of Superheroes, because it makes Johnny happy.
47:04
Stephen Fox: Well, and the truth of it is, like, there are so many… I feel like there are so many, epochs to that series that are fantastic. You know, of course, you have, like, the original era, and then, like, Giffen dominated that… that title for so long, and then…
47:20
Tad Eggleston: Almost dad Giffen.
47:22
Stephen Fox: Oh, my gosh. Oh, that is…
47:25
Tad Eggleston: was booked.
47:26
Stephen Fox: Wow.
47:27
Tad Eggleston: He was booked.
47:29
Stephen Fox: Really? Gosh.
47:30
Tad Eggleston: morning of our last Legion of Superheroes Roundtable, we got the email from his son-in-law that he'd gone into the hospital.
47:38
Stephen Fox: Oh my gosh, that's terrible. That stinks. Yeah, he…
47:41
Tad Eggleston: But we had Levitt's.
47:43
Stephen Fox: Oh, awesome!
47:44
Tad Eggleston: Tom Barronboyne.
47:45
Stephen Fox: Yeah! Oh my gosh, yeah. Well, yeah, there were so many artists, like, even when Giffen, was penciling it, too, like, that was a really fun error, and it was kind of transformative. Of course, like, everybody else, John… well, I shouldn't say everybody else, John Byrne, Arthur Adams, Alan Davis in particular.
48:04
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, Arthur Byrne? Oh, I'm sorry.
48:10
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man. Well, what's funny, and I mean no disrespect to Todd McFarlane, but when the McFarlane wave took over high schools, because I, you know, when it… when you would take in an amazing Spider-Man with Todd McFarlane illustrations, like, the dudes would look over your shoulder, and you'd have, like, 4 or 5 people looking at the art.
48:29
Stephen Fox: And then… so that kind of entranced me in high school, and then I ran into Arthur Adams' X-Men annual. Like, the series of annuals where Storm is… is Willy Mjolnir, and it's…
48:42
Stephen Fox: And that art, blew my mind. It was so, like… it was, like… Anyway,
48:52
Stephen Fox: it felt like all the things that were just a little bit askew with McFarlane were, like, perfect.
48:58
Stephen Fox: And, anyway, so Arthur Adams was a big one, his work now, like, he's fallen in this, like, unending cross-hatching, but he's a master at it.
49:10
Stephen Fox: Oh, man. Oh, Elshin? Yeah. I actually… I did, it's… yeah. Well, he's only him! He's the only freaking person on the planet who isn't getting paid to do it, and would do it anyway, because he's…
49:22
Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but he is now! They're, they're releasing it! June 23rd!
49:28
Stephen Fox: Able…
49:29
Tad Eggleston: arms.
49:30
Stephen Fox: Oh my gosh, that's awesome!
49:31
Tad Eggleston: Thr… hardcover volumes starting in June.
49:35
Stephen Fox: Oh, that's so cool! See, the last I heard, the kayfabe guys, had gotten a, a bootleg of it, that had been compiled. That is so cool.
49:46
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
49:47
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man.
49:49
Tad Eggleston: So it's actually coming. That's when it is. John Byrne, X-Men Elsewen. We've talked about it a few times, but I figured I should tell my mom what I was showing Steven.
49:59
Stephen Fox: Well, and I tell you, too, so John Byrne, his, he did a Red Sonya Spider-Man, I think it was Marvel Team Up, that was, like…
50:11
Tad Eggleston: I remember that.
50:12
Stephen Fox: Yeah, it was… he… it was like this perfect combination. Terry Austin… the way I remember it, I could be mistaken about the inker, but I thought it was Terry Austin, and he was always… he had this smooth…
50:25
Stephen Fox: quality that he would bring to Byrne's work that I really miss. But… You would be…
50:33
Tad Eggleston: and I say this with dripping sarcasm, that inkers are important.
50:38
Stephen Fox: They're not.
50:39
Tad Eggleston: Just trade.
50:39
Stephen Fox: I know. I know, yeah. Well, it's like Farmer and Davis, right? Like, to me.
50:45
Stephen Fox: And, you know, so, good lord, Sylvester is… yeah, I… his… his era on X-Men, and then.
50:55
Tad Eggleston: Jansen.
50:57
Stephen Fox: Yeah, my last hero… oh, yeah.
51:00
Stephen Fox: My last hero, really, like, in my… that… before I was like, I really want to do this, was.
51:06
Tad Eggleston: And the answer is yes, Terry Austin.
51:09
Stephen Fox: Oh, good, yeah. I hate it when I misremember, because I…
51:13
Stephen Fox: It's gonna be yes, because it's… yep, oh my gosh, it's so beautiful. The first couple of pages are in the middle of a storm, and to this day.
51:21
Tad Eggleston: Marvel teen-up number 79.
51:23
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah, the art in that is… it's… aside from the Avengers run, or the Avengers, issues that Burn did, in my mind, they're the best…
51:34
Stephen Fox: I mean, that, and then the last Galactus story ever told, all of those are, like, next-level burn. He has, you know, he's always great, but…
51:45
Stephen Fox: There was just… the lines just sang in those books.
51:49
Tad Eggleston: Everybody knows that was issue 79, which means it was 5 issues after the greatest Marvel team-up ever.
52:02
Stephen Fox: - I don't want to guess.
52:03
Tad Eggleston: I have.
52:04
Stephen Fox: I don't embarrassed myself.
52:04
Tad Eggleston: Hanging on the wall in my living room.
52:08
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
52:10
Stephen Fox: Oh, wow.
52:13
Stephen Fox: Sorry, I'm blind.
52:15
Tad Eggleston: The one with John Velushi on the cover.
52:19
Stephen Fox: Okay, I'm a little less embarrassed than I…
52:23
Tad Eggleston: Saturday night.
52:24
Stephen Fox: That's cool.
52:27
Stephen Fox: Man.
52:28
Tad Eggleston: Chris Claremont and Bob Hall, colors by Marie Severin, and Letters by the great Gaspar Saladino.
52:36
Stephen Fox: Yep. Oh my gosh. But yeah.
52:41
Tad Eggleston: during the first appearance of Bill Murray and Garrett Morse.
52:44
Stephen Fox: And Jane Curtin.
52:46
Tad Eggleston: Jim Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radnor, All of them.
52:52
Stephen Fox: I didn't fuck.
52:52
Tad Eggleston: First appearances.
52:56
Tad Eggleston: I think most of them are last appearances, too.
52:59
Stephen Fox: Right. Man. I didn't know they did that. That's actually kind of cool.
53:05
Tad Eggleston: Yep. Yep. I don't think it's ever been reprinted.
53:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Because it's… it says it's on Marvel Unlimited now, is it actually?
53:16
Stephen Fox: Oh!
53:17
Tad Eggleston: actually is.
53:18
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I need to actually subscribe to Marvel Unlimited.
53:21
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, they can't… they don't have the rights anymore.
53:26
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
53:27
Stephen Fox: To the likenesses.
53:28
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
53:29
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
53:30
Stephen Fox: Oh, that's funny. A lot of those are probably estates now. Manage.
53:35
Tad Eggleston: Radnor and Belushi, I think, are the only ones.
53:41
Stephen Fox: Oh, really?
53:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, and Stan Lee, because Stan Lee's in it, too.
53:46
Stephen Fox: I do have.
53:46
Tad Eggleston: Jane Curtin, I think, is still alive.
53:49
Tad Eggleston: I know Dan Aykroyd's still alive, Lorne Michaels is still alive, Garrett Morris is still alive.
53:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I don't know about Lorraine Newman.
53:57
Stephen Fox: Well, I do have a habit of burying people before their time, so…
54:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean?
54:03
Tad Eggleston: Everybody thought Stan was dead, like, a decade before he was, so…
54:07
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that's true.
54:09
Tad Eggleston: As soon as he stopped appearing in Marvel movies.
54:12
Stephen Fox: You know.
54:13
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Oh, goodness. But yeah, actually, are you… did you know John Burton did a, you probably do, but he did a, he penciled, like, a single book for ElfQuest.
54:27
Tad Eggleston: I did not.
54:28
Stephen Fox: It's crazy, I'd never seen it before. I ran into it in a vacuum.
54:32
Tad Eggleston: That's cool.
54:33
Stephen Fox: It is, yeah, and it's… it's the only…
54:36
Stephen Fox: I'm very particular about Windy Penny, being the only person who could draw ElfQuest, but he does a pretty killer job. So, anyway.
54:45
Tad Eggleston: Now, I, I… I… I am most familiar with, actually, his, A Fantastic Four run.
54:56
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I was… I was late to the party.
54:59
Tad Eggleston: It… like, my… my initial batch of comics…
55:04
Tad Eggleston: Was just a box of stuff.
55:09
Tad Eggleston: That had been mostly my Uncle Adam's and some of my dad's.
55:14
Tad Eggleston: That my grandmother was happy to get out of the house.
55:17
Tad Eggleston: And… and it had a lot of spectacular Spider-Man, a lot of Daredevil, a lot of Marvel team-up.
55:24
Stephen Fox: Oh, wow.
55:25
Tad Eggleston: Burns, Fantastic Four run.
55:27
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that's a good box. Yeah. It was.
55:30
Tad Eggleston: It was a great box, but, but, but, like, a great box that also wasn't, like, the, you know, had more spectacular than Amazing Spider-Man.
55:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It was kind of light on X-Men, heavier on Fantastic Four.
55:45
Tad Eggleston: but really only burned Fantastic Four.
55:49
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
55:53
Tad Eggleston: I wanna say I had some, some Hanza… of Shang-Chi.
55:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, it… it was. It was a… it was a really good box, but not, like…
56:02
Tad Eggleston: But not, like, the best sellers from the time. As it turns out, like, my Uncle Adam had really good taste in which were the good comics, even when he was…
56:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Like, a grade schooler.
56:15
Stephen Fox: See, that's funny, my first Boxo comics, it wasn't a full box, but it was a stack of, like, Power of Warlock, like the Gil Kane.
56:25
Stephen Fox: issues, and then, the Warlock Jim Starlin stuff, which, that's… speaking of, Jim Starlin's… I… I think his artwork is as… as, amazing as his… as his writing,
56:39
Tad Eggleston: I need to read Dreadstar.
56:42
Stephen Fox: Yeah. I've heard amazing things.
56:43
Tad Eggleston: And it just got reprinted.
56:45
Stephen Fox: Well, and he… I don't know, man, he does… he does, like, this superheroic science fiction, with, like, philosophy, and it's… Right. It's just so good. The Longbow Hunters.
56:58
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
56:59
Stephen Fox: I'm sorry, I'm still on… I'm still up.
57:01
Tad Eggleston: Excuse me.
57:02
Stephen Fox: comics.
57:02
Tad Eggleston: You should be!
57:03
Stephen Fox: Okay, because we've.
57:04
Tad Eggleston: I barely started your list of comics. I, I got… I took us, I felt like…
57:09
Tad Eggleston: You caught me on a weird day, Steve, I'm sorry. I'm all over Totally my fault.
57:15
Stephen Fox: No, not letting you finish anything.
57:17
Tad Eggleston: thoughts.
57:18
Stephen Fox: Nobody…
57:19
Tad Eggleston: I'm not even… I'm not even interrupting them with full thoughts. I'm interrupting them with partial thoughts of my own.
57:25
Tad Eggleston: So, I should really be apologizing to the listeners out there who've gotten a lot of half-thoughts from both of us.
57:32
Stephen Fox: No, man. No, I don't get to talk in depth about comics, especially the old stuff, very much, you know.
57:39
Tad Eggleston: This is one of the reasons why, like, it's easier to get… People to respond.
57:46
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
57:47
Tad Eggleston: And come on your show, because, like, even some of the really popular people in comics don't have people that they get to talk comics with.
57:55
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I tell you, Angel Medina is one of the best dudes I've ever talked… just… he entertained my,
58:03
Stephen Fox: You've mentioned the autism, and I… you…
58:07
Tad Eggleston: I actually have my diagnosis.
58:09
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I… well…
58:10
Tad Eggleston: My neurodivergent t-shirt on right now.
58:13
Stephen Fox: Well, poor…
58:16
Tad Eggleston: I also work in special ed, so I work with the autistic kids, and, and, and, and, and…
58:21
Stephen Fox: Oh, awesome, man.
58:23
Tad Eggleston: I can totally appreciate it, because… I'm one of them!
58:27
Tad Eggleston: They just didn't know it when I was their age, because I could talk.
58:31
Stephen Fox: Yep.
58:31
Tad Eggleston: It's amazing how far we've come.
58:33
Stephen Fox: It is, yeah.
58:34
Tad Eggleston: If only somebody could tell the, the… the… the,
58:42
Tad Eggleston: Health and Human Service Secretary that, that autism has been… Broadened in its…
58:49
Stephen Fox: But that's okay.
58:50
Tad Eggleston: There are more autistic people, we just have a better understanding of what autism is. Same number…
58:57
Stephen Fox: Just…
58:58
Tad Eggleston: We don't call them other things now.
59:01
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
59:01
Tad Eggleston: Considering most of those other things were, like… really harmful.
59:07
Stephen Fox: Well, I keep waiting for them to say it was Flintstone Vitamins and not Tylenol, because that would be… I, you know.
59:15
Tad Eggleston: No, what it probably was, was anybody who took both Tylenol and Flintstone vitamins, They interacted together.
59:24
Stephen Fox: Yeah, exactly. The sugar and quasi.
59:28
Tad Eggleston: You wanna know how crazy I am? I've been playing with my Miles Morales action figure, but exclusively putting him in pitching. Right now, he's doing his Juan Marishal impression.
59:40
Stephen Fox: See, now you're speaking outside of my knowledge, but I…
59:46
Stephen Fox: that that's very interesting, and that he's a very capable pitcher. Yeah. Sorry. No, dude, I don't care.
59:58
Tad Eggleston: I just laughed.
59:59
Stephen Fox: Absolutely.
59:59
Tad Eggleston: That's, like, what I do with my action. It's one of my favorite… one of my favorite things about having extra…
1:00:06
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:00:07
Tad Eggleston: the extra points of mobility is that I can have them do baseball things.
1:00:11
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, you're one of the few that doesn't have them do dirty things, so… baseball thing is…
1:00:16
Tad Eggleston: My Star Wars and Marvel action figures play baseball.
1:00:20
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:00:23
Tad Eggleston: Once cheered up a comic writer friend of mine by putting together an entire ball field of action figures playing ball in positions and sending him a picture.
1:00:38
Stephen Fox: Was that the day that you requested the consultation on your neurodivergence?
1:00:44
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I got that later.
1:00:46
Tad Eggleston: Though, I did get it through a comics connection, so, like…
1:00:50
Stephen Fox: Yeah. I'm not making fun, by the way, I was…
1:00:52
Tad Eggleston: No, I know you're not.
1:00:54
Tad Eggleston: I know you're not.
1:00:55
Stephen Fox: I just… I look back on certain behaviors, and I'm like, Oh, man, how did I.
1:01:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, I mean, here's the thing, like, and you're my age, or possibly a year or two older, because you keep describing yourself as nearly 50, and I just turned 46. Yeah.
1:01:15
Tad Eggleston: like, I'm not joking, when… when… in the era where most people are tested, which is, like, before they're 5.
1:01:25
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:01:25
Tad Eggleston: was the DSM-3, and the DSM-3, if you could talk, you weren't autistic.
1:01:31
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah.
1:01:32
Tad Eggleston: the DSM-IV… There were speaking autistic people, but there weren't smart autistic people. So I still wasn't autistic.
1:01:42
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:01:43
Tad Eggleston: It was the DSM-5, where I finally qualified as autistic, but here's the thing.
1:01:50
Tad Eggleston: Apparently, 32-year-olds can't be autistic, because you try to find an insurance company…
1:01:57
Tad Eggleston: That will pay for testing for anybody over the age of 18. Did you know that there are no autistic adults in the world?
1:02:04
Stephen Fox: It's one…
1:02:07
Tad Eggleston: It's what the insurance companies would like you to believe.
1:02:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:02:11
Stephen Fox: Well, my grandmother…
1:02:12
Tad Eggleston: a health scare, and… and…
1:02:14
Stephen Fox: I don't know.
1:02:17
Tad Eggleston: We realized that part of…
1:02:21
Tad Eggleston: Part of what wound up making it scarier, and definitely what wound up making it more expensive.
1:02:28
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:02:30
Tad Eggleston: was they were treating me like a horse when I was a zebra, and if I'd been able to convince them that I was a zebra.
1:02:37
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:02:38
Tad Eggleston: They… They might have done some things differently.
1:02:42
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:02:44
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:02:45
Stephen Fox: Yeah. That's… yeah.
1:02:48
Tad Eggleston: You know, we spent 8 hours and… and…
1:02:52
Tad Eggleston: you know, I have decent insurance, and it was still $1,500 after insurance.
1:02:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. On all sorts of tests to make certain that I wasn't having a stroke, when I, like, could tell you that I wasn't having a stroke, except for the whole fact that I…
1:03:06
Tad Eggleston: wasn't talking very well, and that sounded like I was having a stroke.
1:03:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:03:11
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
1:03:12
Stephen Fox: Man, that's scary. Yeah, my…
1:03:15
Tad Eggleston: And that's when my wife fell down the rabbit hole, and it's like, oh, autistic people have worse health outcomes, like, so much worse that, like, life expectancy's 10 to 20 years shorter.
1:03:26
Tad Eggleston: But, like, almost exclusively because of a communication.
1:03:33
Tad Eggleston: Not because they're more prone to things, but because they can't…
1:03:37
Tad Eggleston: So we started looking for doctors that understood autism. We started making that the first thing that we told doctors.
1:03:44
Stephen Fox: That's really interesting.
1:03:45
Tad Eggleston: autistic, you have to look at sensory stuff, you have to look at, you know.
1:03:50
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:03:50
Tad Eggleston: Isn't necessarily… Like what other people feel.
1:03:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:03:57
Tad Eggleston: More and more, I'm convinced that about 60% of the world is neurodivergent, but the problem is the 40% that aren't are pretty much alike, and the 60% that are.
1:04:08
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:04:09
Tad Eggleston: What, 60% of $9 billion is…
1:04:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. A little bit more than $5.5 billion. So… I figure of that $5.5 billion, there's at least
1:04:25
Tad Eggleston: 4 billion variants of narrative versus…
1:04:30
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, the only thing… the persistence is the discomfort, not the expression of the discomfort. Yeah.
1:04:39
Tad Eggleston: The only thing that's consistent is we're not like those guys.
1:04:43
Stephen Fox: Yeah, and the…
1:04:45
Tad Eggleston: These guys are really annoying, and often dumb.
1:04:48
Stephen Fox: Yep. Well, and .
1:04:51
Tad Eggleston: My wife has joined, like, every neurodivergent Facebook group.
1:04:56
Tad Eggleston: or, or, or Instagram account, blah blah blah. So she's always sending me these cool things, and my favorite is still,
1:05:06
Tad Eggleston: Fire was created by the neurodivergent guy at the back of the cave, banging rocks together to see what will happen while everybody else was out front talking about their hair.
1:05:17
Stephen Fox: Yeah, that's funny. For me, it's rocking chairs, not rocks, but yes.
1:05:28
Tad Eggleston: There you go! There you go!
1:05:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, not all of the neurodivergent guys were banging rocks together, but, like…
1:05:36
Stephen Fox: Yep.
1:05:37
Tad Eggleston: Let, let, like… Where neurodivergence seems to be a majority is arts and science.
1:05:46
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:05:47
Stephen Fox: Well, and I think that there's a… there's a component of needing escape from You know what I mean?
1:05:53
Tad Eggleston: Well, part of it's needing escape, but part of it is, like, by definition, we think differently. And if you're going to create things that are new, on some level, it requires…
1:06:06
Tad Eggleston: thinking differently.
1:06:09
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:06:11
Tad Eggleston: You don't think the same way, harder, to make new things.
1:06:24
Tad Eggleston: This falls into the things that are obvious for neurodivergent people, but really, really hard for neurotypical, or as I like to call them, neurodifficult. That was my
1:06:34
Tad Eggleston: favorite meme that my wife ever sent me. It was a post from some mom that's like, my… my 6-year-old…
1:06:43
Tad Eggleston: neurodivergent son, just called Neurotypicals, Neurodifficult, and I love that.
1:06:48
Stephen Fox: I'm using it for now.
1:06:51
Stephen Fox: Oh, man, yeah, well… I mean, so much.
1:06:57
Tad Eggleston: of my life is people saying, well, I don't understand that, I don't… that doesn't make sense to me. I'm like, I know.
1:07:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And I'm happy for you!
1:07:05
Tad Eggleston: But that's how I work.
1:07:08
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and having decades of learning how to navigate, you know what I mean, professional and other spaces, it makes it… makes it hard for… for certain…
1:07:19
Stephen Fox: Yeah. No, I know what you're making.
1:07:22
Stephen Fox: So…
1:07:25
Tad Eggleston: We're starting into the indie phase, because you mentioned ElfQuest, but I know that at some point you discovered Terry Moore, too.
1:07:34
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, mostly it was just appreciating his art. I, there are some books that, like, I couldn't stop reading, and some, for whatever reason, it's not the quality of the writing, I just had difficulty reading it. And Terry Moore's work, his, like, the more, like, realistic bodies, and, like, the more, like.
1:07:54
Stephen Fox: just tactile figures, I just really loved that approach.
1:08:00
Tad Eggleston: up his How to Draw book?
1:08:02
Stephen Fox: Years ago, there was one, How to Draw Women.
1:08:06
Tad Eggleston: updated it.
1:08:06
Stephen Fox: Oh, awesome. Yeah, it was one of the…
1:08:09
Tad Eggleston: year.
1:08:10
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man. Well, in that book, actually, the… there was one, How to Draw, I think it was maybe…
1:08:16
Tad Eggleston: How to draw women, how to draw beautiful, how to draw something else.
1:08:20
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Well, it wasn't.
1:08:21
Tad Eggleston: Four of them.
1:08:23
Stephen Fox: Well, it was just… I loved it because it talked about, like, the, the natural… the natural, like, fat deposits that are avoided by… by most traditional artists, and I actually… one of the things that I, you know, in this project and other ones, I just… I… I like the idea of
1:08:41
Stephen Fox: Heroes that look like,
1:08:44
Stephen Fox: People, you know, run-of-the-mill people, not…
1:08:48
Stephen Fox: You know, who have… have jobs and are stressed and, you know…
1:08:53
Stephen Fox: So, anyway, his work, I, you know, he has a quality that,
1:09:01
Stephen Fox: Kevin McGuire, they're not the same, but there's a… No, no, no.
1:09:04
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's a good…
1:09:07
Stephen Fox: But Kevin McGuire's figures, you can just feel them. And the expressiveness, anyway, it…
1:09:16
Tad Eggleston: is acting weird. I was… I was trying to pull up the specific page for…
1:09:20
Stephen Fox: Yep.
1:09:21
Tad Eggleston: For… for the how to draw, but… But it's,
1:09:28
Tad Eggleston: It's not wanting to scroll down.
1:09:32
Tad Eggleston: So I can only look at, like, the stuff that's on top.
1:09:36
Tad Eggleston: Let's see if we can do it by…
1:09:43
Tad Eggleston: Well, maybe he doesn't have it up on his website, because it's not in the Kickstarter Second Chances section yet.
1:09:50
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, abstractstudios.com.
1:09:54
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:09:54
Tad Eggleston: Pay attention. He just put out a new version. It's really good.
1:09:59
Stephen Fox: Okay, awesome.
1:10:00
Stephen Fox: Yeah. No, I'll grab it for sure.
1:10:03
Tad Eggleston: And also, just based on your reading, if you… er, just based on reading this comic, if you haven't read his Rachel Rising.
1:10:12
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Okay.
1:10:13
Tad Eggleston: Good.
1:10:14
Tad Eggleston: Racial Rising, I think, would be way up your alley.
1:10:17
Stephen Fox: Really? Okay.
1:10:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:10:19
Stephen Fox: Sorry, I'm taking notes, Foam.
1:10:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm guessing that you loved the art, but didn't get into Strangers in Paradise because it didn't have any genre stuff going for you.
1:10:31
Stephen Fox: Well, I have some…
1:10:31
Tad Eggleston: The spy stuff going at various times.
1:10:35
Tad Eggleston: But it was a lot more two chicks…
1:10:40
Tad Eggleston: Dealing with the world.
1:10:42
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and that's, you know…
1:10:44
Stephen Fox: These days, I kind of prefer more relational stuff, but I… Yeah, I.
1:10:50
Tad Eggleston: Maybe you should try Cherry again.
1:10:53
Stephen Fox: Okay.
1:10:54
Tad Eggleston: And they're all part of the same universe, but Rachel Rising and Serial are kinda… Cyril's kinda very connected to Rachel Rising, are, like, his…
1:11:07
Tad Eggleston: His horror books in the universe?
1:11:10
Stephen Fox: Awesome.
1:11:11
Tad Eggleston: Echo is his sci-fi book.
1:11:19
Stephen Fox: Whoa, I didn't know he… sorry.
1:11:22
Stephen Fox: I didn't know he'd… He ever did Birds of Prey, that's interesting.
1:11:27
Tad Eggleston: Just a little bit. He also did one issue of, of… of, ultimate… Marvel team up.
1:11:37
Stephen Fox: Oh, okay.
1:11:38
Tad Eggleston: We did a Peter and Mary Jane miniseries.
1:11:45
Stephen Fox: That sounds appropriate. Like a good… that sounds like a good call.
1:11:50
Tad Eggleston: And he can talk for a long time on how Gwen Stacy was done wrong.
1:11:55
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well… He's a big fan.
1:11:57
Tad Eggleston: Gwen Finn.
1:11:58
Stephen Fox: Really? Yeah.
1:12:01
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man.
1:12:03
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I remember that was the first character in a comic that died that I knew of.
1:12:10
Stephen Fox: And then, yeah.
1:12:14
Tad Eggleston: Stayed dead almost as long as, well…
1:12:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, stayed dead almost as long as Uncle Ben, though, though, like… Now it's less and less.
1:12:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Because Gwen's come back… In a couple of different ways, and Uncle Ben still really has him.
1:12:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. He's, like, the only person in all of superhero comics that, like…
1:12:36
Stephen Fox: He used to be… died, didn't he?
1:12:39
Tad Eggleston: never came back.
1:12:40
Stephen Fox: Well, yeah, I remember the joke was Uncle Ben and Bucky, and then, in the 90s.
1:12:45
Tad Eggleston: Right, and then Bucky came back.
1:12:48
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, that one might have been worth it, but yeah.
1:12:52
Tad Eggleston: Soldier's pretty cool.
1:12:53
Stephen Fox: It is. He is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think, as an adult, my… the last two that I would put on my, like, oh, man,
1:13:03
Stephen Fox: Jeff Darrow and, Amanda Connor, both of them blew me away.
1:13:08
Tad Eggleston: I love Manic Honor.
1:13:10
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, her power…
1:13:11
Tad Eggleston: he did.
1:13:15
Tad Eggleston: She and Jimmy are gonna be at, Da-da-da-da-da.
1:13:19
Tad Eggleston: Fan Expo Chicago.
1:13:22
Stephen Fox: Oh, man.
1:13:22
Tad Eggleston: And I'd reached out to them about doing a panel, and we… Oh, wow. We need to…
1:13:28
Tad Eggleston: iron out details.
1:13:30
Stephen Fox: That's awesome. Yeah, they're power girls.
1:13:32
Tad Eggleston: said on air, because it's… it's not actually…
1:13:35
Tad Eggleston: Jimmy's interested, but we haven't ironed out details. Jimmy's a cool guy. Haven't met Amanda yet.
1:13:41
Stephen Fox: Really?
1:13:41
Tad Eggleston: But Jimmy was on, and we had a lot of fun with Jimmy.
1:13:45
Stephen Fox: Really? Yeah, that, that run on Power Girl, that was one of my last, like, mainstream superhero books that I really look forward to every month. Yeah.
1:13:55
Stephen Fox: I love the air.
1:13:56
Tad Eggleston: Wednesday comics.
1:13:58
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah.
1:13:59
Tad Eggleston: She's a girl.
1:13:59
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:14:00
Tad Eggleston: There's a real story on Wednesday comics.
1:14:03
Stephen Fox: Yeah, it's… I totally understand why she only… why she predominantly does, like, covers and writing and that kind of thing now, but, like, I really miss…
1:14:11
Tad Eggleston: She does a… she still does a fair… I mean, right now, they're doing, I think, Harley Quinn Elvira?
1:14:18
Stephen Fox: Oh, okay.
1:14:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:14:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, they, they… I don't think she ever does more than a series at a time, but…
1:14:29
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:14:30
Tad Eggleston: And Jimmy does a lot more writing than drawing or inking these days, it feels like.
1:14:36
Tad Eggleston: Though I think he might still incur.
1:14:41
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man, gosh. Yeah, Quasada was another one that, good lord. And when he was paired with Kevin Nolan on, Sword of Azrael, that miniseries was, that might still be my, my favorite, comic illustration.
1:14:58
Tad Eggleston: For me, Quesada and Jimmy are… will and always…
1:15:04
Tad Eggleston: Will be, the guys who, who revitalized Daredevil.
1:15:12
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah. No, I could definitely see that.
1:15:15
Tad Eggleston: Marvel Knights, and then, and then were instrumental in, in Ultimate Marvel, you know, I mean…
1:15:22
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:15:22
Tad Eggleston: Their time… re… working Marvel, I think, is…
1:15:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Marie Javen's at DC right now is doing some pretty freaking…
1:15:34
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:15:35
Tad Eggleston: Impressive stuff, too, but in terms of eras where, like, The entire superhero line got…
1:15:42
Tad Eggleston: rejuvenated. Their time at Marvel goes really high on the list.
1:15:48
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and especially, like, and I don't wanna… I don't intend to speak ill, but, like, Axel Alonzo's kind of tenure, there was a lot of…
1:15:56
Stephen Fox: A lot of different approaches.
1:15:59
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:15:59
Stephen Fox: I feel like Poissata.
1:16:02
Stephen Fox: Oh, did it?
1:16:03
Tad Eggleston: I thought Axel came.
1:16:04
Stephen Fox: Yeah, no, you're right, you're right, you're right. I'm thinking, I'm thinking…
1:16:07
Tad Eggleston: Still picked up from them.
1:16:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:16:11
Tad Eggleston: I think it was… like, and they did great work too, but I think it was… I feel like it was DeFalco?
1:16:18
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:16:19
Tad Eggleston: Who stuck around even after… they took over… I mean, that… that's the weird thing about… Marvel…
1:16:28
Tad Eggleston: editors-in-chief, is a lot of the time, like… It's… It'll, it'll,
1:16:42
Tad Eggleston: You know, whoever takes over, the other ones will still be there.
1:16:47
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah, yep.
1:16:48
Tad Eggleston: Y-you know.
1:16:50
Tad Eggleston: But again, Axel, I think… He's been doing great stuff at AWA lately.
1:16:57
Stephen Fox: Really?
1:16:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I've loved a lot of what AWA has done.
1:17:06
Tad Eggleston: Axel's another one that I think started at Vertigo. Vertigo was…
1:17:11
Tad Eggleston: Like, as far as editors go, like… almost every… Great editor of our generation.
1:17:21
Tad Eggleston: got their start at Vertigo. I mean…
1:17:26
Tad Eggleston: Karen Berger, obviously, Shelley Bond, obviously, but, like, Stuart Moore…
1:17:31
Tad Eggleston: Didn't start at Vertigo, but became…
1:17:34
Tad Eggleston: Solid there, you know, and then just, yeah.
1:17:39
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I'm grateful, yeah, it was kind of heartbreaking when that was shuttered for a bit.
1:17:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:17:48
Stephen Fox: But it is cool to kind of, you know… Yeah. Sorry.
1:17:54
Tad Eggleston: No, it was more than heartbreaking.
1:17:57
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, shelly's been on a number of times, and, and…
1:18:03
Tad Eggleston: Generally doesn't get too deep into it, but like…
1:18:06
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, like, she saw the writing on the wall.
1:18:10
Tad Eggleston: Enough that, like, she wasn't shocked when she got fired, but, like, she picked up and moved to LA with them.
1:18:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know, she was still doing great work, and then suddenly…
1:18:24
Tad Eggleston: they weren't interested anymore. Thankfully, it took Chris Ryle all of… 30 seconds?
1:18:32
Tad Eggleston: I think she was walking out of the meeting where she'd been fired when she got the message from Chris Ryle, said…
1:18:39
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:18:40
Tad Eggleston: I hear you're free!
1:18:46
Stephen Fox: I hope I one day leave that kind of legacy with my… yeah.
1:18:55
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean,
1:18:58
Tad Eggleston: on one side, like, I get the younger people who get frustrated at, how are you ever supposed to break in if every job goes to somebody who's had it already?
1:19:08
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:19:08
Tad Eggleston: But on the other side, if you're good at something, then yeah, like, if somebody's dumb enough to let you go, somebody else is gonna go, thank you!
1:19:17
Stephen Fox: Yeah. No, well, and that's the… that's the thing, when,
1:19:21
Stephen Fox: When a corporate environment becomes too focused on the corporate piece, it's like…
1:19:25
Stephen Fox: Yeah, someone like that should have somewhere to land.
1:19:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:19:30
Stephen Fox: Anyway, sorry, I'm getting…
1:19:32
Tad Eggleston: No!
1:19:35
Tad Eggleston: A, I started that tangent.
1:19:40
Tad Eggleston: Once again, like, we might as well call ourselves 22 tangents.
1:19:45
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Except that that's.
1:19:46
Tad Eggleston: Probably too low.
1:19:50
Tad Eggleston: 222 tangents?
1:19:52
Stephen Fox: Yep.
1:19:53
Tad Eggleston: 22-22 tangents.
1:19:56
Tad Eggleston: Ahem.
1:19:58
Tad Eggleston: But it's getting late, and I'm getting even more slap-happy, and I started this show Slap Happy tonight, so let's get to my favorite closing questions.
1:20:07
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:20:09
Tad Eggleston: This first one… I'm curious as to what your answer's gonna be, because, like, you…
1:20:18
Tad Eggleston: you're in the running for least experience in the industry of people that I've talked to.
1:20:25
Stephen Fox: Okay.
1:20:26
Tad Eggleston: And this is one that, like…
1:20:29
Tad Eggleston: experience winds up mattering, but, like, in the 5… as you've probably noticed, in the less than 5 years since I started this podcast, like, I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
1:20:41
Tad Eggleston: The people that I call my friends, the people that I text with, the experiences that I've had that I, like, have to… I took a picture with Terry Moore that I emailed.
1:20:53
Stephen Fox: And then I texted.
1:20:56
Tad Eggleston: To another famous… Yeah, yeah.
1:21:01
Tad Eggleston: I went to a baseball game with…
1:21:05
Tad Eggleston: You know, where you just have to pinch myself to go, that really happened?
1:21:11
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But I find that it doesn't matter
1:21:16
Tad Eggleston: How long you've been in this industry.
1:21:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:21:21
Tad Eggleston: Have, and continue to have, surreal…
1:21:25
Tad Eggleston: Crazy experiences, where it's like, wait a minute.
1:21:29
Tad Eggleston: How did… how did this become part of my life?
1:21:33
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:21:34
Tad Eggleston: We've started collecting the stories. Tell me a story that, like, if you…
1:21:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. …weren't into comics. If comics wasn't something that you took seriously, that you…
1:21:45
Tad Eggleston: Worked at doing that, like, you never would have had blank experience.
1:21:51
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, the one that… I don't know how interesting it'll be to anybody else, but one of my favorite memories is, back when the Wizard World conventions were happening.
1:22:02
Tad Eggleston: I remember those.
1:22:02
Stephen Fox: Angel Medino would always show up in Chicago. And, I already referenced that he was… he was great to talk to.
1:22:09
Tad Eggleston: once.
1:22:10
Stephen Fox: Oh, yeah. I… I showed him my portfolio, and he was the first pro
1:22:15
Stephen Fox: to tell me that I could really do this if I wanted to. Cool.
1:22:19
Stephen Fox: And I didn't… you know, at the time, you know, I had just gotten married, and things were… you know, I made other decisions, but, like.
1:22:28
Tad Eggleston: You mean you chose the life where you could pay for things like rent and or mortgages, and eat free meals a day? Yeah.
1:22:38
Stephen Fox: Well, it's… it is… that's the other piece. It's… it's… there's a level of scariness, to being a comic artist that's undersold, and, like.
1:22:48
Tad Eggleston: Not on this show.
1:22:52
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man.
1:22:53
Stephen Fox: Well, that's the thing, like, you know, in a parallel story. Anyway, talking to Angel Medina, like, he… he had a similar appreciation for John Byrne, and John Byrne was the first artist to tell him that he was good enough if he really wanted to. But yeah, to your point, and kind of where we're going.
1:23:12
Stephen Fox: Recently I went to the Memphis Comic Expo a couple years back.
1:23:17
Stephen Fox: and just the number of artists who… they, you know, they told the same story over and over. They were doing their own thing, not just because they wanted to do their own thing, but because, like, the big two were not calling them back anymore. And that is… that's heartbreaking, because they're good… they're… they're not just…
1:23:34
Stephen Fox: like, they weren't outdated, their skill was still incredible, and they were… they were struggling to find, like, that contract work, so they were doing their own thing, and it's like…
1:23:44
Stephen Fox: you know, health insurance, all these different things. It's just, it's a… it's a different life.
1:23:49
Tad Eggleston: And half the time, even when you're at the big two, you're a contracted worker, so you don't have health insurance, you don't have…
1:23:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know, every attempt to unionize comics has failed miserably. There's debate over whether or not you could.
1:24:04
Stephen Fox: Yeah, interesting.
1:24:04
Tad Eggleston: have to be something along the lines of, like, the Writers Guild, Actors Guild, etc. But there are legit legal questions as to whether or not
1:24:14
Tad Eggleston: Those could be formed now, or whether they're kind of… Grandfathered in because they.
1:24:21
Stephen Fox: Yes.
1:24:21
Tad Eggleston: listed as now. That's a whole, like, listen enough episodes, you know that I can go down deep political…
1:24:29
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:24:31
Stephen Fox: Well, the…
1:24:32
Tad Eggleston: I like to call it policy rabbit holes, because the only reason it's political is because there's only one party that gives a damn about policy right now, and the other only gives a damn about billionaires being…
1:24:45
Tad Eggleston: more billionaires.
1:24:48
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:24:48
Tad Eggleston: and or trillionaires. Don't get me wrong.
1:24:51
Tad Eggleston: The party that cares about policy
1:24:54
Tad Eggleston: doesn't always treat the billionaires as harshly as they should. I'm not trying to…
1:25:00
Tad Eggleston: But I'll also say that they're not the same. For anybody out there.
1:25:05
Stephen Fox: I was like.
1:25:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh! They are all corrupt.
1:25:09
Stephen Fox: Yeah. No.
1:25:10
Tad Eggleston: our degrees. Yeah.
1:25:13
Stephen Fox: No, for sure. Well, and there's a, you know, there's a whole section…
1:25:17
Tad Eggleston: where the president.
1:25:19
Stephen Fox: Created it.
1:25:20
Tad Eggleston: $1.7 billion slush fund for himself. Right out in the open!
1:25:26
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:25:27
Stephen Fox: No, it's… And actually, yeah…
1:25:31
Stephen Fox: the… I grew up… I grew up in a… in a… anyway, that… I mean… I'll just say…
1:25:39
Tad Eggleston: I know that you're in Nashville, so, so you're in a slightly bluer part of a very red area.
1:25:49
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and that's… but I'll say, like, going through, like, the last few years of reevaluating, like, faith and… and everything, like, it's not easy in certain parts of the country, because, like.
1:26:03
Stephen Fox: Family sees you a certain way, friends see you a certain way, and even if they don't see you that way.
1:26:09
Stephen Fox: like, there's just no understanding.
1:26:12
Tad Eggleston: Well, and…
1:26:12
Stephen Fox: This is one of the.
1:26:14
Tad Eggleston: where I will absolutely also blame the left, because too much of the left has so…
1:26:21
Tad Eggleston: Wants to paint people of faith so…
1:26:25
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:26:25
Tad Eggleston: One-dimensionally, that it makes.
1:26:27
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:26:28
Tad Eggleston: It's hard for them not to become What they're painted as.
1:26:32
Stephen Fox: Well, and it's hard, too, because, like, you know, 80% of evangelicals voted in a specific way, so it's very difficult to, to not paint with a broad brush, you know what I mean? Right. And it's… I don't know.
1:26:47
Tad Eggleston: All the more so when, like, the left will paint mainline Christians as evangelicals, even when they're not.
1:26:56
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:26:58
Stephen Fox: Yeah, so I… yeah, I just…
1:27:00
Tad Eggleston: You know, the number of people who don't know the difference between a Methodist and a…
1:27:10
Stephen Fox: Yeah. W-w-w-.
1:27:12
Tad Eggleston: They, whether they like to call it… they're non-denominational.
1:27:16
Tad Eggleston: Nut job!
1:27:18
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:27:20
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
1:27:21
Stephen Fox: For sure.
1:27:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, because I get this, I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois.
1:27:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:27:30
Tad Eggleston: Bible Belt of the Midwest.
1:27:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I had to… I had to learn the Bible backwards and forwards.
1:27:37
Tad Eggleston: To deal with my bullies in public school.
1:27:41
Stephen Fox: Gosh.
1:27:42
Tad Eggleston: Now, thankfully, I have an aunt that's a Methodist minister, so I had the resources to be able to do that. But that's also why, for a long time, I've been aware that, like, different denominations
1:27:53
Tad Eggleston: view things differently. I have always been much bigger on denominations that talk about the things that you should do because you're Christian, than the things that you shouldn't, or more importantly, the things other people shouldn't do because of Christianity. It's like…
1:28:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. We read in the same book here, this is where I'll give a quick plug.
1:28:14
Stephen Fox: Because…
1:28:14
Tad Eggleston: This is the Comics Podcast.
1:28:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Anybody who wants to, like, actually understand stuff like this a little bit better, go read Mark Russell's.
1:28:25
Tad Eggleston: Second Coming. Read Mark Russell's God is Disappointed in You, and Apocrypha Now.
1:28:31
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:28:31
Tad Eggleston: All of those are, like, he grew up evangelical.
1:28:35
Tad Eggleston: And then read the Bible, and went, Cool.
1:28:42
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah.
1:28:45
Tad Eggleston: have some questions.
1:28:47
Stephen Fox: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, and that's the… that's the hardest part, too, because… okay.
1:28:53
Stephen Fox: For people who are hardwired a specific way, who think literally, who believe that the rules exist for a specific reason, and trust that those who instill those rules have evaluated them.
1:29:08
Stephen Fox: Because they love them, and they understand that responsibility. To grow up, and then to see the rules… the rules were not the thing that mattered, they were the control mechanism. What actually mattered was, being able to hang on to…
1:29:23
Stephen Fox: your stuff.
1:29:25
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I'll go a step further. My wife and I were having this conversation
1:29:30
Tad Eggleston: Just the other day.
1:29:31
Tad Eggleston: We recently managed to buy two cars in one weekend on…
1:29:37
Stephen Fox: If you know me.
1:29:37
Tad Eggleston: Money because of my connections in the comic community.
1:29:41
Stephen Fox: Oh.
1:29:42
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:29:44
Tad Eggleston: And she still, like, sometimes pinches herself. She's like, because… she's like, I don't even know, like, I… I…
1:29:51
Tad Eggleston: I don't have the trust to be able to go… you know, I went along with you when you said we should go here first, because, you know.
1:29:57
Stephen Fox: Yes.
1:29:58
Tad Eggleston: This is a friend of… or this is the brother of this person, and they'll… they'll… They'll guide.
1:30:03
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:30:04
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, walking into the dealership, I did not expect to walk out with two cars. I expected to walk out with a lot more information and an ally.
1:30:11
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Right? I wound up.
1:30:13
Tad Eggleston: walking out with two cars, which is better, but, like, I didn't have that expectation.
1:30:19
Tad Eggleston: Right. But one of the things I said to her was.
1:30:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, the thing is, for me, it's not about trust, it's about, I know I don't know how to do this.
1:30:30
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:30:30
Tad Eggleston: So I need somebody who does know how to do this, and the only part that's trust-based is, can I find somebody that I have reason to believe that they know how to do it that's based on more than them telling me that they know how to do it?
1:30:47
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:30:48
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:30:49
Stephen Fox: Yeah, and that's slight.
1:30:53
Tad Eggleston: You know, is there somebody that I can find that it's more than, trust me, bro.
1:30:58
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:31:00
Tad Eggleston: The answer is I can through the comic community.
1:31:03
Stephen Fox: Yes.
1:31:04
Tad Eggleston: That's what churches are for a lot of people.
1:31:06
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:31:07
Stephen Fox: Yeah, something crazy.
1:31:09
Tad Eggleston: happens, and they go to their pastor to pray on it. And yes, they prey on it, and that's a big thing, but in praying on it, the pastor also goes, you know, Joe owns a car dealership.
1:31:18
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:31:19
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:31:20
Tad Eggleston: Bill's a mechanic.
1:31:22
Stephen Fox: I knew.
1:31:23
Tad Eggleston: Or Susie, you know, is a realtor.
1:31:28
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:31:29
Tad Eggleston: No, let me, let me give you her number.
1:31:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You should talk to her.
1:31:34
Tad Eggleston: And in that way, this person that you didn't have a specific relationship with.
1:31:41
Tad Eggleston: Is part of a community that you do have a relationship with.
1:31:45
Tad Eggleston: And therefore, they both have a reason to help you out, and you have a reason to trust them to be helpful.
1:31:53
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:31:54
Tad Eggleston: And that is something that we completely discount.
1:31:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, so often you hear people talking about, oh, all of the policies are screwing these people in the… I'm like, yeah, they're getting screwed, and the one place where they're accepted and can get the help they need and whatnot is their church, and you're telling them to leave it because evangelicals brought us Trump.
1:32:16
Tad Eggleston: Do you understand the problem?
1:32:19
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah.
1:32:21
Stephen Fox: Well, and it… it…
1:32:23
Stephen Fox: it offers what country club… what country clubs do for the wealthy. Right. You know, and… and community is, it's a requirement, for survival, a lot of times. Yeah.
1:32:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's just, I mean, again, it's more complicated than that. This is one of those places where us neurodiverse people go, I don't understand how you can't see this. And the neurotypicals are like, what?
1:32:50
Tad Eggleston: And then you explain it, and they're like, oh, that makes sense, yeah!
1:32:55
Stephen Fox: Yeah. But…
1:32:58
Tad Eggleston: But… this doesn't feel right. It's like, feelings.
1:33:03
Stephen Fox: Oh, don't get on a… yeah, anyway.
1:33:07
Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong, feelings are very important, but this is not one of the places where… how is it that you neuro-difficult people
1:33:16
Tad Eggleston: Don't want us to have feelings when, like, our dog dies!
1:33:21
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:33:21
Tad Eggleston: But want us to vote for people based on how we feel about them.
1:33:27
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:33:28
Stephen Fox: If we want to have a beer with them. Right, right.
1:33:32
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:33:34
Tad Eggleston: Feelings when your school got shot up!
1:33:38
Tad Eggleston: Too bad!
1:33:40
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:33:41
Tad Eggleston: feelings when deciding that, like, I feel like I'm safer if I have an M15, and therefore everybody should be able to have M15s. That's when we're supposed to have feelings!
1:33:55
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:33:57
Tad Eggleston: How hard is it to figure out, more guns equals more gun death?
1:34:02
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:34:03
Tad Eggleston: And I'm not actually… I'm becoming, but I'm not actually a full-on abolish-the-second amendment guy. And the only reason I'm even becoming a
1:34:12
Tad Eggleston: full-on abolish Second Amendment guy, isn't that I'm a full-on take away the guns, it's like, if we're gonna treat the Second Amendment as it's completely invaluable, then you know what? It's gotta go so we can write something that makes sense.
1:34:26
Stephen Fox: Yeah, well, and it's.
1:34:28
Tad Eggleston: convinced me. The Second Amendment is bad.
1:34:30
Tad Eggleston: I wasn't gonna make that argument, but you convinced, not you, Steven.
1:34:34
Tad Eggleston: I mean, maybe, I don't know you well enough.
1:34:36
Stephen Fox: I'm not that persuasive, but… but yeah, I mean, the power…
1:34:42
Stephen Fox: the deep roots of lobbyist groups, like the NRA, are… they're impossible to track just how influential they are, because they're… it's not just them. They have children groups, and they have… they have indoctrination processes, and they have all of these established.
1:34:59
Tad Eggleston: Y, you…
1:35:00
Stephen Fox: You want to have your head explode.
1:35:02
Tad Eggleston: Load, Rita… It's Jane Mayer.
1:35:08
Tad Eggleston: Make certain… let me make certain I have the…
1:35:11
Stephen Fox: Fair enough.
1:35:14
Tad Eggleston: The author's name right.
1:35:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Jane Mayer, Dark Money, The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Radical Right.
1:35:24
Stephen Fox: The other… well, I'll read that one, if you'll read God's Own Party, which is about the… the, I've heard of that.
1:35:33
Tad Eggleston: this one.
1:35:34
Stephen Fox: Yeah, the dark marriage, essentially, between…
1:35:37
Stephen Fox: how… how the national prayer breakfast mutated into, a Republican party that… that sees itself as Christian.
1:35:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you.
1:35:45
Stephen Fox: L.
1:35:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, no, I know this one.
1:35:49
Stephen Fox: Yeah, it's a pretty incredible.
1:35:50
Tad Eggleston: Of course, it looks like it's really out of.
1:35:52
Stephen Fox: It is, yeah. Hey, I could send you a PDF that I purchased.
1:35:58
Tad Eggleston: Well, feel free to.
1:35:59
Stephen Fox: Okay, I'll do that. Yeah, it's one of the most…
1:36:01
Tad Eggleston: Otherwise, I know… I'm pretty certain my mom… oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
1:36:06
Tad Eggleston: There is an updated version coming out in August, though.
1:36:10
Stephen Fox: Oh, awesome.
1:36:12
Stephen Fox: Yeah, I hit it.
1:36:12
Tad Eggleston: Got a $150 pre-order price guarantee?
1:36:16
Stephen Fox: Yeah, mine was…
1:36:17
Tad Eggleston: Copper.
1:36:17
Stephen Fox: 45.
1:36:18
Tad Eggleston: Paperback's $29.99, okay.
1:36:21
Stephen Fox: Yeah. So hopefully we.
1:36:22
Tad Eggleston: I get an audiobook, too, because that's how I do most of my prose these days.
1:36:26
Stephen Fox: Yeah, me too.
1:36:27
Tad Eggleston: I'll totally throw that to my…
1:36:29
Tad Eggleston: throw that on my list. And I feel like my…
1:36:33
Tad Eggleston: my mom is, is, like, the sister of the Methodist minister, so…
1:36:38
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:36:39
Stephen Fox: And, and…
1:36:39
Tad Eggleston: She's still very active in her own church, so, like, she's often the one that tosses the good books
1:36:48
Tad Eggleston: My direction.
1:36:50
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:36:51
Tad Eggleston: I'll be… you know, like, I'm not currently… I… I… I… I…
1:36:55
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes… I've been on and off active in churches based almost entire… first of all.
1:37:01
Tad Eggleston: pretty much only Methodist churches, and secondly, like, based almost entirely on…
1:37:08
Tad Eggleston: The quality of the pasture as a… a… Communicator, but also, like…
1:37:20
Tad Eggleston: A thought-provoker. Not somebody who tells you what to think.
1:37:24
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:37:25
Tad Eggleston: It helps you ask questions, encourages you to ask more questions.
1:37:31
Tad Eggleston: You know…
1:37:33
Tad Eggleston: I've even quite enjoyed a number of Bible studies in my life, but only the ones that, like.
1:37:39
Tad Eggleston: Are much more, let's… let's explore this, then.
1:37:45
Tad Eggleston: This is how it is.
1:37:48
Tad Eggleston: Did I lose you, Steven?
1:37:54
Tad Eggleston: You're definitely frozen on screen, but I also don't hear you.
1:37:58
Tad Eggleston: We're having technical difficulties.
1:38:02
Tad Eggleston: hopefully not for so long that I feel like I need to edit.
1:38:05
Tad Eggleston: Because I've got one question left to ask, Steven, the most important question.
1:38:11
Tad Eggleston: I just need him to come back, and I lost him, so we're gonna pause.
1:38:20
Tad Eggleston: Alright, we're back. The technical difficulties are over, but just to be safe, we're gonna get to that last question right now. Steven, tell me something you love.
1:38:29
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love.
1:38:39
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced?
1:38:42
Tad Eggleston: And you'd really like them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
1:38:48
Stephen Fox: Elfquest. ElfQuest. Yeah, that's,
1:38:52
Stephen Fox: That's a good one. Yep, it's…
1:38:54
Tad Eggleston: I need to… like, I've read…
1:38:59
Tad Eggleston: The first volume I know, and I can't remember if I read the second volume?
1:39:04
Tad Eggleston: Big Dark Horse volumes, so, like, I have more ElfQuest reading to do, so I might, like, hook you up to do a book club.
1:39:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:39:13
Tad Eggleston: I was emailing with a friend of mine recently, or today, about possibly doing some book clubs over the summer, because I have this stack of things that I want to read, and sometimes the only way to make myself
1:39:28
Tad Eggleston: Get to it, is to schedule an episode.
1:39:32
Stephen Fox: Yeah, no, I understand, yeah. Well, and I tell you, yeah,
1:39:37
Stephen Fox: Wendy Penny has a couple of very interesting, YouTube biographies, that if you haven't heard her whole story, that's almost as wonderful.
1:39:49
Tad Eggleston: She started out as a cosplayer.
1:39:53
Stephen Fox: Yeah, yeah, and wanted to get into animation, worked with Ralph Bashke for a while, and then, dreamed of an animated ElfQuest.
1:40:01
Tad Eggleston: I started out as a cosplayer.
1:40:02
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:40:03
Stephen Fox: Yeah, sorry. Spoilers, I guess, yeah.
1:40:07
Tad Eggleston: No, that's okay.
1:40:08
Tad Eggleston: Why not get to them anytime soon?
1:40:10
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:40:12
Tad Eggleston: Though, like, it's another one of those things where I keep meaning to reach out to Wendy, because that would also.
1:40:19
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:40:22
Tad Eggleston: finish reading.
1:40:24
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah.
1:40:26
Tad Eggleston: You know, again, like, I have all of these tools to make myself get around to things. It's like, oh, I've been meaning to read this forever. Let me set up an interview. Now I have to read it.
1:40:40
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:40:43
Tad Eggleston: So… Steven, it's been really fun. I hope we plugged your book well enough. The book, again, is Scar Tissue Bargains on Kickstarter soon, so go sign up to be notified about launch.
1:40:59
Tad Eggleston: I… I got to read it, and it's… it's pretty cool. I enjoyed it. definitely, definitely those of… those people like me who both like personal work and… and work that shows
1:41:14
Tad Eggleston: Thoughtfulness and, and, and, like, artistic growth.
1:41:18
Tad Eggleston: This is a book for you.
1:41:20
Tad Eggleston: Cool.
1:41:21
Tad Eggleston: Just don't charge it… I mean…
1:41:24
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is… this is always the balance with people, with people in, like,
1:41:30
Tad Eggleston: Don't you dare lose money.
1:41:32
Tad Eggleston: But the more you can allow people to read it without having to break the bank on it, the better.
1:41:39
Stephen Fox: Yeah. Yeah.
1:41:40
Tad Eggleston: side is, You're done with it, so you don't have to pay an artist.
1:41:45
Stephen Fox: That's true, yep. Unless I want to fix it, yeah.
1:41:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's good if you get paid, but I'm assuming that you have a day job, and that's why you were able to, like.
1:41:57
Tad Eggleston: Do your comic.
1:41:59
Tad Eggleston: By staying up into the wee hours of the night, and…
1:42:04
Stephen Fox: Yep, just like me.
1:42:05
Tad Eggleston: sometimes…
1:42:06
Stephen Fox: That was another thing.
1:42:07
Tad Eggleston: Welcoming the kids when they wake up.
1:42:10
Tad Eggleston: And pretending that you just got out of the shower, rather than… We're at the drawing board.
1:42:17
Stephen Fox: Yep. Man, it's really been a pleasure. I'm really grateful I got to meet you.
1:42:24
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, again, keep in touch, like, if I don't reach out to you to, to, to do, ElfQuest Book Club, feel free to, like.
1:42:37
Tad Eggleston: flip it back on me and say, hey, you said we were gonna read ElfQuest, and I'll probably go, oh yeah! And we'll set something up. But otherwise, like, let me know when the Kickstarter goes live.
1:42:47
Stephen Fox: Okay.
1:42:47
Tad Eggleston: that sort of thing, definitely, definitely stay… stay in touch, because I had fun. I love talking comics.
1:42:54
Tad Eggleston: And…
1:42:55
Stephen Fox: Yeah, me too.
1:42:56
Tad Eggleston: We have so many book clubs and whatnot that I… I'm all for allowing people to be involved in 22… I view 22 Panels as a community. I'm just…
1:43:06
Stephen Fox: Yeah.
1:43:06
Tad Eggleston: I'm the activity director.
1:43:09
Stephen Fox: That's what I should.
1:43:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is crazy.
1:43:11
Stephen Fox: Yeah, man, I'll definitely…
1:43:14
Tad Eggleston: I came from senior care, I used to be an activity director.
1:43:17
Stephen Fox: I totally understand. I was a concierge for a while. Yes.
1:43:21
Tad Eggleston: Alright, for 22 panels, this has been Stephen Foxx, and we will see you after the next page.